âWhile much of Europe wallows in recession, the economy of this volcanic island in the mid Atlantic is growing at a clip that has surprised many
people, thanks to a currency fall - in which the crown lost almost half its value to the euro - an export and tourism boom as well as
growing consumer confidence.â

Quote:

A few percent is the weekly price jitter. American multinationals have high exposure abroad as cited in this article from my previous post above.

As I mentioned above, I got out of Eurozone stuff over a year ago. Itâs a bit late now! Had well paying preference shares in Banco Santander and
others. However, âa few %â is probably a bit low, I have to agree, seeing the sensitivity of the US market to EU affairs. For those US
multinationals with extra exposure, care is advised. Nihil pro certo habete! Such is my faith!

Excerpt:Spain's problems are far worse than what happened in Greece, he added. "Spain has higher unemployment than Greece, higher total public and
private debt than Greece," as well as a bigger housing bubble, a higher percentage of subprime mortgages, and the country has "one of the highest
percentages of debt owed to foreigners," Dent said. He called Spain one of those nations that are "too big to fail, too big to bail."

Der Alte

Idd, some exaggeration there. If the situation in Spain was worse than Greece's, the country would have asked the EU an aid loan a long time ago.

Spanish unemployment is now at a level never before recorded since the civil war in 1937.
One in four adults is without employment , of those under the age of 25 - more than half.
This exceeds the situation that existed in the U.S. at the depths of the 1930's depression.
Spains economy is the fourth largest of Europe, and five times that of Greece.

Spain's quixotic "quest" for "green energy" illusory non solutions as an incorrect choice of alternative energy to proven practical nuclear power went
a very long way towards bankrupting the country. A lesson should be there for every other country on earth who should not be so gullible as to be
conned into bankruptcy by the radical and unattainable utopianism of the socialist green movement.
Taxpayers the world over need to become sophisticated enough in their thinking not to be deceived by such specious frauds and sucked into such
impractical schemes by the populist utopianist socialist propagandists. People need to grow a brain and get wise to the scam and tell the worlds AGW
fanatics ....enough! A similar honesty and realism and pragamatism needs to be applied to the demand for sound money and legitimate banking being
implemented instead of the worldwide scam that is occuring today. If some integrity isn't restored to the government and financial institutions of
the world, a gradual progression towards a collapse of the corrupt systems is inevitable .....the only uncertainty being how long it will take to
eventually get to the point where the whole house of cards collapses.

Furthermore .....as the Volkswagen was the hitlermobile.....
the Chevy Volt is the obamamobile .....and the first of those concept cars is more practical and economical today than the second ......so where is
the real progress in what is advertised .....er uh propagandized to be "progressive"

A source of energy not indexed to a fuel commodity begins to payback
from day zero. World demand for wind generators exceeds production.
Early adopters may have incurred greater capital startup , but break even
on costs is inevitable , something which one will never see with nuclear ,
whose energy is not free.

There is a variable return on wind and solar when the wind blows and the sun shines. So it is a kind of "energy farming" that like agriculture is
seasonal and subject to the weather. When you consider the capital investment required for reliable continuous gigawatt years of power available
24/7/365 for ten years or fifty years or a hundred years or a thousand years, nuclear simply beats wind and solar. With respect to nuclear being
indexed to a "fuel commodity" ....the nuclear fuel usable by breeder reactors sits waiting right now in the waste respositories for conventional
reactors whose owner / custodians would pay for it to be carted away.

It isn't any bona fide "world demand" for wind generators which is represented by the artificially created "government demand" for wind generators.
Likewise it isn't any "world demand" for laws and regulations and taxes which is the reason why there are excessively so many laws and regulations and
taxes. The world demand for wind generators is like the "world demand" for .40 cal pistol ammunition which would seem to be an unusual demand when
"homeland security" (Oceania thought police) places an order for 450 million rounds .....you do see the point. There would seem to be a huge world
demand for predator drones ....depending on what world you live in......indeed there could even be a huge world demand for Afghani opium or similar
golden triangle exports .....or even more than coffee beans from other "cartel customer countries". Who are the cartel customer countries but every
country in the world? Cartels and cabals is what we have world wide and it's not just coming some time soon to a neighborhood near you, it is already
there... and has been there for a very very long time.

The whole green energy mentality is absorbed and permeated with delusional utopianism like an opiate "soma" of brave new world dimensions, which has
fogged the brains of its proponents into a never never land of shangrila "gaia energy". Bankrupting nations is a consequence of unbearably costly and
erroneous pursuits of unrealistic agendas where such pursuits involve energy, military adventure, or economic adventure based upon fictitious monetary
and banking systems, especially while seeking to replace industrious mercantilism and capitalism with communism. The future is even more bleak when a
scenario exists where all of the foregoing errors are proceeding concurrently.

There's a lot more testimony which could be offered to reveal that mans character, honesty, and decency as a public servant.

Probably only a somebody who would want to vote for an honest man who not only talks the talk of respecting the constitution as being the supreme law
of the land, but who has without fail for decades walked the walk of an honorable man who means exactly what he says about respecting
that same constitution as so many others have shown conclusively that they only "say" they respect ....while owning actions which show they are lying
politicians.

The other candidates aren't fit to tie Ron Paul's shoelaces and the way most of the media has treated the man is a shame and a disgrace. Even Bill
Maher gets some credit for recognizing that Ron Paul is an honest man and the rest of the ridiculing and disrespectful critics should have to form a
line and kiss his behind, since just about everything the man has said has proven true.

Finland and France started building advanced European Pressurized Reactors in 2005 and 2007. The projects are now each 5 years behind schedule and 2.7
billion Euros over budget. To double Spain's nuclear output -- replacing the current actual wind and solar generation -- would require 5 EPRs. If Spain invested in new nuclear instead of renewables, and their experience were the
same as France and Finland, it would mean 13.5 billion in cost overruns, plus at least 15 billion Euros more of budgeted investments that are first
producing revenue 5 years late. This scenario seems like it could easily have been as great a drag on Spanish utilities as the renewable energy road
actually taken.

Will the United States have better luck? Recent wind power contracts in Texas are supplying utilities at $35 to $45 per megawatt hour, rates fixed for 25 years. Add in $22 per megawatt
hour from the federal Renewable Energy Production Tax Credit for a total of $57-$67 per megawatt hour. If the new AP1000 reactors at the Vogtle plant
in Georgia arrive on time and within budget, they very well might beat wind -- though I don't know exactly how to compare Vogtle's $8.3 billion
federal loan guarantee with the wind Production Tax Credit. If they suffer from the same sort of delays and cost overruns that e.g. the TVA is
suffering with Watts Bar Unit 2 or the Finns and French face with EPRs, no chance.

The consequence of breeders is the acceptance of plutonium as reactor fuel.
This is unacceptable to states who oppose and dread proliferation.
The United Nations would need to assent to it first. Witness the current Iran
confrontation with only a very modest fledgling program.

There is no adequate resolution for the intermittency and variability issues for wind and solar where the output is discontinuous. The environmental
footprint for energy farming is an inherent issue also. Desperation for watt hours is tough to keep hidden from view as any ridge covered with
windmills and littered with smashed birds will testify ...not to mention the whoosh whooosh whoosh
Bona fide generation 4 reactors will complete the nuclear technology integration and/or transition technology picture. It seems ridiculous beyond
comprehension that Oak Ridge National Laboratory where the LFTR reactor was succesfully prototyped and proven by operating on a laboratory scale for
several years would not be a laboratory tasked with advancing that research involving thorium. The LFTR is a "fail safe" reactor design. There are
enormous surplus stockpiles of thorium available....literally a ten thousand year supply. Political retasking of Oak Ridge National Laboratory has
that laboratory demonstrating the generating potential of burning wood chips as a renewable fuel instead of doing advanced nuclear research at a
national laboratory which was dedicated to that better purpose. The different "breed and burn" reactor design that the Bill Gates group has been
researching is another promising reactor design and either one of those generation 4 technologies has huge simplicity and feasibility advantages over
any contemplated hydrogen fusion reactor or green energy concepts.

If you have confidence as I do that we are due for a rise in treasuries,
as I mentioned in the second part here _www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=17281&pag...
the July $127 strike call is trading at about 30 cents now.
The August $128 strike call at 45 cents is a safer bet .
September $ 130 is about 50 cents.

Today Friday May 4 , as expected conflicted jobs data sent equities
reeling down , and a pickup in TLT valuation
Monday after the elections in France and Greece will be the trigger.

@ franklyn
One has to sympathize with the Japanese as the only country to have suffered both nuclear war and also from the peaceful uses of atomic energy. Bad
news for an economy already in permanent recession for reasons ignored by the West for two decades. I also noted the German case and was about to
comment on both but you got in first.

Another possible political rift between the EU powers France and Germany regarding nuclear power. One wonders how the upcoming election in France will
impact the somewhat cozy relation if Hollande gets in.

Putting on my Cassandra hat,

Apple [AAPL 566.93 -14.89 (-2.56%) ] dragged on the Nasdaq as the iPad maker fell below its 50-day moving average of $585 a share.

Australia sucks at the tit of China , and as China goes so does it's dependents.
With so much revenue pouring in from raw material purchases from China it
had to go somewhere and real estate characteristically is where. That bubble
will pop as it did in the U.S., Ireland and Spain.
Contraction of Chinese economy signals that things are not wholesome with
it's customers , pretty much all of the developed world. We will be on skids
for some time to come yet.

To be in free fall , the petroleum price would need to be dropping a dollar a
minute , that won't occur until there is no market demand. There is no shortage
of petroleum, production can readily meet current demand and stockpiles are
full to the brim. As economic contraction proceeds and belt tightening curtails
consumption , the trend is for the price to drop due to lower demand. The
money from disinvestment in this commodity will flow back to stocks or
treasury securities. Previously noted here _www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=17281&pag...

You either have no idea what 'demand' is or else are just using whatever definition suits your current argument. I can agree with your statement
regarding wind generators - but only on the narrow grounds that, indeed, lots of people would want one if they were cheap or free. Conversely, I could
second your statement regarding oil - but only if I mentally added '...at current prices'. In neither case have you made a really meaningful
statement: obviously abstract demand (free of price constraints) is almost unlimited, while production does meet current demand at market prices. Both
of these are near to tautologies.

My comment regards petroleum consumption in the current world market
circumstance, of course that will change over the long run.
Relatively higher price does not immediately suppress demand for petroleum , after
all would you not commute to work at all if gas rose to five dollars a gallon ? or
walk instead ? Expect price to drop considerably over the next few months as it
has begun to do so already. The price fluctuation has very little to do with actual
production, which is market price driven and has nothing whatever to do with
economic theory. This I had explained at some length before here _
( well the author did )www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=17281&pag...
Update _www.presstv.com/Program/233017.html

I think we should be very concerned. Living conditions for most of the people in Mexico, Pakistan, and India are very poor, to an extent that is
probably difficult for many of us to imagine. I do not think many people realise how bad it is in these other countries, how desperate these people
are. Their daily lives are a battle for survival.

Now we have to ask ourselves: Could our country become like these other countries someday? Why are these other countries so bad?

I think it is mainly about high fertility rates, creating an expanding population that there are not enough jobs for. The surplus in labor, relative
to available work, drives down wages to subsistence levels. There are also not enough old houses and buildings for people. It is more economical to
use buildings that already exist, but when there is an expanding population, new houses must be built, which is more expensive.

It can also be about lack of land, or not enough land where the limited job opportunity is. Japan can be seen as one example of this. The high land
prices lead to high cost of living. Labor is more expensive because they have to be paid more to afford rent or high mortgage payments. Prices are
higher because the businesses must pay higher rents.

Things apparently are not good in the UK, nearly 2 million unemployed. Many more have jobs that do not pay enough to live adequately. Immigration is a
controversial issue, but I sometimes wonder if living conditions for working class people in the developed countries will fall to third world levels
because of increasing access to job opportunity across borders. In one way, one could perhaps say that this is good, because of increasing global
equality of access to job opportunity. But all this competition for jobs is likely to mean lower wages, which will
increase inequality. If all the desperate unemployed from more impoverished countries move to other countries where the jobs are, one would
expect the price of land to greatly increase where these jobs are, perhaps making housing more unaffordable.

One of the consequences of lack of job opportunity and unaffordable housing is a lengthening of childhood, and a delay of adult responsibilities for
the young. Perhaps we can expect our children not to be able to leave their parents house until much later ages.

Interestingly, the reverse of many of these bad things can be seen in some of the other countries with growing job opportunities. Things are
still worse than in the Western countries, but there are many signs of improving living standards. In Brazil, domestic servants are no longer willing
to be treated like animals, as they now have other choices of employment. In some towns in India, the young men are leaving home to find decent paying
jobs elsewhere, whereas before they typically lived in multi-generational familes because they cold not afford to establish separate households.

It almost seems as though there is a shifting of wealth from the USA, Europe, Canada, and Australia, to other countries that previously had very low
standards of living, such as China, India, Brazil, and Mexico. Whether this is more from growing international trade, or because of immigration, is
difficult to know. One would expect that in some situations, such as Mexico, the outflow of surplus laborers from Mexico (into the USA) would relieve
pressure, allowing wages to rise with economic growth, whereas before economic growth could not keep pace with rapid population growth.

JP Morgan down ~8% : A hedge fund is just that; you minimize your losses by in effect taking insurance so that if one play fails the other succeeds.
To have both fail â although details are sketchy â is a piece of crass incompetence. Another reason to not allow commercial banks into the
dangerous arena of stock dealings with your financial deposits.

The telecomms VZ and T responded favorably to an upgrade from Credit Suisse. Old favorites of mine.

European and British stocks, along with the US market, apparently see no evil WRT the Euro. Not so Asia.
Der Alte

Pickens has been trying â and failing â to get Congress to pass what is now called the Energy Security Act, aimed particularly at the development
of natural gas and breaking the country free of its dependence on Middle East oil.

Poor Pickens. Can't
convince Congress to pass H.R. 1938: North American-Made Energy Security Act, to "direct the President to expedite the consideration and approval of the construction and
operation of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and for other purposes." That line "aimed particularly at the development of natural gas" is a triumph of
incompetent fact-checking.